Looking for Mary: Or the Blessed Mother and Me

Entering her 40th year, Beverly Donofrio, a "lapsed Catholic," inexplicably begins collecting Virgin Mary memorabilia at yard sales. Soon, immersing herself in a spiritual quest, she makes a pilgrimage to the holy city of Medjugorje. There, she learns that Mary comes into a person’s life only when pride steps out and receives a bonus: hope. In Looking for Mary, Donofrio offers the universal story about a woman who--in a quest for the Blessed Mother--finds herself.

"There is a promise Holy Mother makes to us," explains Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, "that any soul needing comfort, vision, guidance or strength, can cry out to her, flee to her protection, and Blessed Mother will immediately arrive with veils flying. She will place us under her mantle for refuge, and give us the warmth of her most compassionate touch, and strong guidance about how to go by the soul's lights." Untie the Strong Woman is Dr. Estes' invitation to come together under the shelter of The Mother - whether she appears to us as the Madonna, Our Lady of Guadalupe....

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined", Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care.

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha

"Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering," says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork - all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. Brach's 20 years of work with therapy clients and Buddhist students.

Riding in Cars with Boys: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Good

Best-selling author Beverly Donofrio is building a growing following of fans with her honest, moving accounts of experiences from her own colorful life. Riding in Cars with Boys--the basis of the hit movie starring Drew Barrymore--is her funny and touching account of growing up too fast in the 1960s.

My Life on the Road

Gloria Steinem - writer, activist, organizer, and one of the most inspiring leaders in the world - now tells a story she has never told before, a candid account of how her early years led her to live an on-the-road kind of life, traveling, listening to people, learning, and creating change. She reveals the story of her own growth in tandem with the growth of an ongoing movement for equality. This is the story at the heart of My Life on the Road.

Angel Adams says:"Completely Changed Me"

Publisher's Summary

A best-selling memoirist bravely tells the story of the night evil paid her a visit - and how prayer chased evil away

Beverly Donofrio had already lived two lives, first as a scrappy young mother on the streets of the East Village and later as the best-selling author of Riding in Cars with Boys. By the time she reached her 50s, she thought she had seen it all.

Now, even though she was living in a vibrant, picturesque Mexican town, where she practiced yoga, drank margaritas in her backyard, and took salsa lessons, she felt lost and was searching for monasteries to visit. The religious practice that had nourished her for several years had faded. She missed God. Then one night she woke to find a rapist holding a knife to her throat. So begins the memoir that charts Donofrio’s journey - a long and twisting road through denial, mourning, anger, vulnerability, and retreat at five very different monasteries.

Told through Donofrio’s brutally honest, often ribald, emotionally unsparing voice, Astonished is a tender and hopeful narrative of healing and learning to love life again.

Astonished is an enjoyable listen. Having listened to Beverly's previous two audiobooks, I was looking forward to this next chapter in her life. Astonished didn't disappoint. I am a Catholic, Pro-life and vote my faith, therefor, I don't share some of Beverly's beliefs, but no matter. One doesn't have to share her views to enjoy this book. I applaud her ability to turn her faith to help carry a heavy cross no one should have to bear. For only with God is this truly possible, I think. Beverly doesn't wait in the shadows for life to happen. She travels down many different paths. Opens closed doors and seeks guidance and direction in her search for life. Most of us wake, go to work, come home, sleep and do it all over again the next day. Not Bev. So her life's journey makes for an interesting read. Beverly's sister did a beautiful job of bringing her printed words to life. Download this audiobook and you will not be disappointed.